The reason for this comes in a couple of flavors, most notably that the ad model for Biz of Baseball no longer sustained it. For every story I could run on this site for nothing with little compensation could be published at Forbes where I have been happy and see some return on content.

However...

This does not mean The Biz of Baseball is going away. While I was unable to gain the funds to create a single portal for all sports, there is still a lot of data used within it daily by fellow members of the media, as well as other researchers.

To that, my work in MLB salary arbitration continues. Total data is culled from this year's class, and with it, some data on the site has been updated.

For nearly a decade, those of us at the Business of Sports Network have strived to bring you not only news and opinion around sports business, but data not found anywhere else. From college students working on papers, to media outlets both big and small, information provided across “The Biz of….” sites has been provided free of cost, something few media outlets provide.

As advertisement models have shifted, revenues have declined. While we retain the domain names, we have had to archive The Biz of Basketball, The Biz of Football, and soon, The Biz of Hockey.

Now, our most popular site, The Biz of Baseball, is in danger of the same fate. While overtures of venture capital and other investment has been discussed, to date they have fallen through.

In an effort to not only save The Biz of Baseball, but also create a single portal that would allow all aspects of sports business to be covered, we are reaching out to the community through an Indiegogo investment campaign. Our target is $6,000. When accounting for commission from Indiegogo, if the campaign runs to its goal, a total of $5,400 will be garnered to allow porting of all data across the various Biz sites into one repository, a new hosting service and redesign.

In addition, to grow content we will embark on a large contributor network which will allow us to cover everything from soccer on an international scale, to all facets of motor racing, the PGA, and beyond. If it’s sports outside the lines, we’ll be covering it.

We understand that not everyone can make a donation. What we do hope is that everyone that reads this will take the time to pass this link below on whether by email, or social media.

We can’t thank you enough for using our sites as often as you have. We hope that can not only continue, but flourish.

The Business of Sports Network is undergoing a restructuring that will see several independent sites closed down. The Biz of Football, The Biz of Basketball, and The Biz of Hockey will soon close as independent sites. These URLs will remain associated to the Business of Sports Network. The Biz of Baseball will not be affected, and will remain in its current format.

Following the site shutdowns, a new site that covers all sports under one location will be created. Documents and other artifacts that were on the football, basketball, and hockey sites will then be moved there. Content from The Biz of Baseball will also be repurposed or summarized in this new site location, BusinessOfSportsNetwork.com.

We believe that in doing so, not only will we continue to provide support for basketball, football, and hockey, but branch into all aspects of sports business under one portal, allowing ease of access and continued growth.

We want to thank all those that have continued to support the Business of Sports Network, and we look forward to providing this fresh, new website in the coming days.

Best regards,Maury Brown President Business of Sports Network Bizball LLC

Each year, those tracking the interest in Major League Baseball look to television ratings and viewership numbers to frame the discussion. Since 1967, those numbers have been tracked by the Nielsen Company. Now, the Biz of Baseball has been updated with those numbers, along with other details out of the data. The data includes:

The challenge… Spread autism awareness, today, and every day. On the first day of International Autism Awareness month, we set aside sports in favor of advocacy.

Autism. You’re living with it. You either have a family member affected by the mental disorder (remember, it’s not a disease), you know someone connected to it, or you’re impacted in the future through impacts to the health care system.

This is the fourth year of our Autism Awareness Challenge. The premise is simple: set sports aside and spread awareness about the Autism Spectrum Disorder. This year takes on added urgency. A recent report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows alarming numbers. According to the report:

About 1 in 88 children has been identified with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) according to estimates from CDC's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network

ASDs are reported to occur in all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.

Those diagnosed as being on the autism scale has increased 78% in the last decade, alone

ASDs are almost 5 times more common among boys (1 in 54) than among girls (1 in 252).

Studies in Asia, Europe, and North America have identified individuals with an ASD with an average prevalence of about 1%. A recent study in South Korea reported a prevalence of 2.6%.

About 1 in 6 children in the U.S. had a developmental disability in 2006-2008, ranging from mild disabilities such as speech and language impairments to serious developmental disabilities, such as intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, and autism.

“The CDC numbers are alarming, yet they don’t begin to tell the story of the real families, real individuals struggling every day,” said Autism Speaks President Mark Roithmayr. “From fighting to get a diagnosis and secure appropriate educational services and therapies, to trying to manage tremendous financial and emotional burdens or find a satisfying job opportunity, families are engaged in a daily battle against this disorder. We need to marshal the same resources and attention that the government has devoted to other diseases and disorders and finally make this a fair fight.”

As we have done each year, we have reached out to the sports and entertainment community to help lend support. In doing so, we have seen individuals that simply wish to help, but also those that are touched directly by autism. Be it the granddaughter of Seattle Mariners President Chuck Armstrong who has autism, Dodgers’ outfield Matt Kemp who has a brother with autism, actress Alyssa Milano who also has been directly touched by the developmental disorder, or Ryan and Dawn Neufeld, in reaching out to the community we have seen just how far reaching autism is.

With today being the beginning of International Autism Awareness Month, all the Business of Sports Network sites have been rebranded to remind you about this campaign, and within each post this month, we will be providing a link to Autism Speaks for those that wish to donate to assist in funding research on autism.

Autism is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life and affects a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others. Autism is defined by a certain set of behaviors and is a "spectrum disorder" that affects individuals differently and to varying degrees. There is no known single cause for autism, but increased awareness and funding can help families today.

Currently, the Autism Society estimates that the lifetime cost of caring for a child with autism ranges from $3.5 million to $5 million, and that the United States is facing almost $90 billion annually in costs for autism (this figure includes research, insurance costs and non-covered expenses, Medicaid waivers for autism, educational spending, housing, transportation, employment, in addition to related therapeutic services and caregiver costs).

Know the Signs: Early Identification Can Change Lives

Autism can be addressed through therapy. Children do not "outgrow" autism, but studies show that early diagnosis and intervention lead to significantly improved outcomes.

IF YOU ARE WITHIN THE MEDIA, WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO JOIN THE CAMPAIGN, AS WELL AS AUTISM SPEAKS EFFORTS. LINK OR REPURPOSE THIS MATERIAL TO HELP THE CAUSE.

The following have lent their name in saying they support autism awareness, if you wish to be added to the list, please contact Maury Brown, president of the Business of Sports Network via email for more details.

Larry Cancro - Senior Vice President of Fenway Affairs for the Boston Red Sox. Also Chairman of Autism Speaks, New England. Board member Melmark, New England a school that specializes in autism and similar cognitive disabilities

In an effort to provide information to readers, The Biz of Baseball has been updated with information on MLB club sales.

The data, which provides info on the latest purchase, includes the followings:

Club

Price sold for

When

Who sold to

Notes that detail aspects such as the current controlling owner and other aspects of the sale.

Below is an example:

Marlins

$158.5 million

2002

Jeffery Loria

Included a $38.5 million no-interest loan from MLB to Loria. Sale of Marlins tied to the sale of the Red Sox and Expos. Henry sells Marlins to Loria who sells Expos to MLB for $120 million. Expos later relocated to DC and sold to Lerners who rechristen the club "Nationals"

Try this: during that time, it wasn’t the Yankees that had paid the most, it was the Orioles (remember, the club from Baltimore at one point had the highest player payroll in all of baseball).

That’s not surprising? Try another: the Florida Marlins paid Luxury Tax in 1997, the year they won the World Series.

Who else has been dinged? (You know some because I just mentioned), but there are a total of 10.

Here’s how the site’s been updated:

We are still tracking the yearly totals from 2002 to the present

We’ve added the 1997-99 Luxury Tax totals

We’ve added a table totaling up the all-time collected money across both systems that also shows the percentage of the total collected (for the record, $243,078,709 in Luxury Tax has been collected, and will surely pass $250 million this year).

Each table has a corresponding bar graph

Each table shows total for each club and total paid out in each year

To see the data, select MLB Luxury Tax Totals, which can also be found to the left of any page on The Biz of Baseball under “Resources”

SPECIAL BUSINESS OF SPORTS NETWORK REPORTS:The Labor Battle in the NFL. See BizOfFootball.com for details